Lessons From my Mistakes as a Freelancer

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New to freelancing or thinking of jumping ship?

Now is a great time to do so, with 50% of the U.S workforce predicted to be made up of freelancers by 2020.

In the past seven years, I’ve worked for over a hundred clients in 20+ countries. This is something that many people reading this piece will be able to achieve.

My career has evolved from providing social media marketing services, through to SEO, eBook creation, long-form B2B blogging, and SEO content services.

It’s been a rollercoaster ride, giving me the freedom to travel and work from 18 different countries. It’s also been a considerable learning curve, I’ve made mistakes, I’ve learned valuable lessons.

So, I’m passing on my experience to anybody starting or thinking of beginning a freelance career.

Proposals:

When working on a proposal for a new client, make it as personable and concise as possible. They don’t need to know your life story; they want to see that you are skilled, experienced, and qualified to work with them.

Never copy and paste a proposal or a cover letter, and try and to give the potential client just enough information about how you will approach and solve their problem, without doing any free work.

Also, beware of clients that ask for a test article, or any free work.

You are a professional; you do not need to prove yourself. Especially if you have an excellent resume or portfolio that showcases your best pieces of work.

That being said, sometimes, I will write a few sentences or a paragraph as an example of how I would write for a specific project. I believe that this gives me a competitive edge against other freelancers that may not have taken the time to do this.

Organize Your Online Presence:

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One of the first things that a potential client may be inclined to do is to Google your name. They will expect to find links to your social media profiles, previous work, and possibly an online resume.

Keep your LinkedIn profile updated; it looks sloppy if you can’t keep the one professional social media profile that’s on display looking good and reading well.

More and more often we’re seeing people get pulled up in the news etc. for negative Twitter and Facebook activity from their past.

I would strongly advise keeping your social media profiles locked to friends if they are going to showcase some of your less attractive opinions and attributes to potential employees.

For example, complaining about previous clients, or anything that says you can’t be bothered with work, hate your boss, or love to be lazy, may not give you an overwhelming chance of securing a new role.

Set Clear Milestones with Clients:

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Many times, I have been stung by clients that try to get more service than what was agreed upon at the start of a project.

This is my fault for two reasons. One is that I was too nice to them because I wanted repeat business, the other is that I didn’t set clear milestones with my clients before payment.

There is no worse situation than when you complete a project and submit an invoice, only to be asked… Can you just edit this? Can you add this section? Can you complete a small task I forgot to mention?

No matter how friendly people come across, many of them want as much for their budget as they can bleed from you.

Set actionable goals such as word count, hourly rate, agreed to sets of amendments, charges for edits and tweaks, overtime rates, and payment terms.

Certain freelance sites will offer to automate some of these essential processes. Just be sure that you take advantage of these features and don’t be left with delayed payments and extra work.

Research your Client:

I cannot stress this enough! RESEARCH YOUR CLIENT. Google their name, Google their business name, check them out on LinkedIn.

If it’s a freelance network such as UpWork that you are using for job searches, make sure a new client’s payment method is verified!

Let me take a second to explain why this is important.

In the summer of 2017, I was living in Spain and had just got through a two-week dry patch in terms of my freelance work. I needed to get some cash together urgently, so I hastily accepted a $45 per hour writing job on UpWork.

The client quickly moved all conversations to Skype and set all my daily tasks through Skype messenger. However, I used the UpWork hourly tracker for logging time on each piece of work.

I also submitted the final pieces through UpWork.

Over the first week I clocked up over 30 hours, the work came in thick and fast. Then, halfway through week two, the client stopped responding to my requests for new work. He appeared to be offline and hadn’t logged into his UpWork account for several days.

After checking his UpWork profile, he hadn’t verified his payment method… Meaning, UpWork had no way of getting my money from him. We’re talking about roughly $800 after UpWork’s 20% commission.

I was mortified, my haste had stopped me from checking out this guys credentials. Also, I wasn’t the only person that he had scammed; three of us were out of pocket for upwards of $3000 for a week’s work.

Luckily for me, I contacted one of UpWork’s senior investors via LinkedIn after getting nowhere with their helpdesk. He gave my case the push, which leads to UpWork honouring my fee. Others may not have been so lucky, and this process took almost two months to complete.

There are two lessons to learn from this.

Firstly, check all your client’s credentials, including their payment history if this is an option.

Secondly, if you get nowhere with lower-level complaints, escalate them to a decision-maker, get through the red tape, and do not stop until you get the answer that you deserve.

Literally, ask for your complaint to be escalated. Many companies can offer this service, but they won’t put the wheels in motion until you ask.

If a potential client or business has a wealth of negative feedback or has mistreated previous freelancers, stay well away!

Never Stop Learning:

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Markets change fast, and with this comes new client expectations, updated skillsets, and new industries.

There is a wealth of free and paid educational information out there in the form of podcasts, blogs, eBooks, and online courses.

Use this to your advantage and stay on top of your game so that you can reap the top end jobs in your professions segment of the freelance economy.

When I started as a freelancer, Social Media was a whole different world compared to what it is today. If I hadn’t stayed educated and kept my eye on Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, and the advertising side of the SMM landscape, my clients wouldn’t be getting the expertise that they deserve and require.

Read, read, read, digest new information, and practice your skills until you’re confident that you are at the top of your game.

Best of luck in all your freelance endeavors.